Manuél Ferrari

This picture is from the infamous NY incident as I was driving by myself and couldn't safely take video.

I was driving on a freeway and approaching an interchange when I saw bikers in my rear view mirror. They were pretty far back from me at the time I changed lanes to get around some slower cars so I could have a clear path around the long and curved interchange. I know this particular interchange well as I use it almost every day. I know how hard I can push my car around it without getting anywhere close to the point where traction control would kick in. I took the curve at a quick but safe pace and saw the bikers in my rear view banking their turns to keep up with me.

Once I got to the next freeway the path straightened out and kept the car at about 10 MPH over the limit (the flow of traffic on So Cal freeways). The bikers accelerated way past the limit to get ahead of me and then one of them changed into my line and slowed his bike down just like the guy in NY did. Other bikers came up behind me and to the side of me. They were all on sport bikes and I could see tats on some of their arms. Some of them were turning their heads and looking at me. And the whole swarm of them slowed down to 60 MPH, forcing me to slow down with them. The speed limit is 65 MPH and most drivers drive between 75-80MPH in the lane I was in. So not only were the bikers disrupting traffic by swarming around my car, they slowed down the whole freeway in the process.

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It was so surreal. I've watched the YouTube videos from the NY incident and I felt like the same exact situation was happening to me. It definitely felt like the bikers had a mob mentality going. I don't know if they were simply trying to piss me off so I would race them or if they felt they were wronged for some reason. I definitely did not cut any of them off when I changed lanes on the freeway interchange. The lead biker was accelerating when I changed lanes but he was still nowhere near my tail. I would never have cut him off as I don't want to injure the biker or myself. If the biker felt that I meant to slight him when changing lanes it was definitely a perceived slight as I have nothing wrong with bikers and I was not doing anything to cause them harm.

Luckily when they were swarming me an opening developed to the right of me and I was able to change lanes safely and get to the far right of the freeway and exit to another freeway. They continued straight on their path.

The experience was both frightening and maddening. Mob mentality is a weird thing. Bikers have the right to the roads but they shouldn't act like assholes and attempt to intimidate or incite people in cars. Guys like this give all the law abiding bikers a bad reputation.